People often refer to benzodiazepines as benzos, and doctors prescribe these medications widely around the globe. In the United States alone, doctors write over 93 million prescriptions each year for these drugs.
There is, however, a severe downside to the increased usage of prescription drugs. Addiction to drugs like benzos can be life-altering in ways that extend far beyond the physical symptoms. And if you have a benzodiazepine addiction – please know this – you are not the only one.
A report by National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that over 25 million Americans 12 and older have used prescription benzodiazepines in the past year. The stark reality is that these medications are more habit-forming than people think.
It’s not just the health risks—the physical and mental toll it takes can be overwhelming. But the effects go even deeper. They can affect your relationships, work, and even your money.
This can leave you feeling disconnected from your old life as if everything is slipping away. It’s a cycle that can leave you feeling isolated and lost.
It is like a crack in a dam. At first, it seems small and contained. But over time, the pressure builds. The damage spreads and floods parts of life that were once stable and secure. It’s a heavy burden that goes unnoticed until the damage has already been done.
Benzodiazepines can help you relax when you’re feeling anxious or stressed. They work by calming your central nervous system. This helps reduce racing thoughts during panic episodes. It also relaxes tense muscles caused by stress.
In some cases, these medications may be the only option for people with severe anxiety, muscle spasms, or seizures. When things feel chaotic, they can offer a sense of calm. However, this relaxation has some important risks to think about.
Some individuals refer to these medications as “date rape” pills for a sinister reason. Benzos may weaken your ability to resist sexual assault or aggressiveness.
Sadly, some people misuse this by adding the substances to soft drinks or alcoholic drinks. This makes them harder to notice. Benzos are tasteless when added to drinks. This makes it easier for bad people to do harmful things.
Benzodiazepines have their official names, like Valium, Xanax, Ativan, and Librium. These are the brands you’d see prescribed by doctors.
But they go by a whole different set of names on the streets. People might call them xannies, vallies, or tranks. Others use terms like downers, goofballs, or even Mexican, roach, and heavenly blues.
In some circles, they’re known as stupefi, anxiety meds, date rape drugs, or club drugs. It’s a mix of medical terms and slang. These drugs have different names based on who you talk to.
Doctors write millions of prescriptions every year for these drugs. Doctors wrote 34.6 million prescriptions for alprazolam and wrote 21.3 million for lorazepam.
Healthcare providers issued 23.7 million prescriptions for clonazepam. Diazepam had 9.1 million prescriptions. Temazepam had 4.7 million prescriptions.
The brain typically produces a neurotransmitter called GABA, which inhibits activity. This neurotransmitter is helpful in that it can suppress brain activity and calm down the central nervous system.
When GABA attaches to its receptor, it calms your brain and nervous system. This helps you relax. But when benzodiazepines are in your system, they boost that calming effect. You feel more relaxed, and the soothing impact lasts much longer than if GABA acted alone.
It’s like the calming power of GABA gets a serious upgrade. So, what you end up with is a deeper sense of relaxation, less anxiety, and slower brain activity.
While benzos can help treat severe anxiety and help you sleep better, they come with a high risk of addiction. These drugs affect the central nervous system. As a result, you may quickly become dependent on them in your daily life.
If you are worried that your Benzo prescription might be a problem, check for these signs of addiction. These signs can help you see if you need professional help.
Benzodiazepine addiction often shows through repeated drug-seeking behaviors. This means a person keeps looking for the drug, even when it causes serious problems. One of the first signs of getting hooked on benzodiazepines is building up a higher tolerance.
Put another way, as time continues, you need more of the drug to get the same effects. This can push you to use the drug more and in high doses, even as the downsides keep piling up.
Eventually, you may become physically dependent on these drugs. Here, you may experience uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms if you try to reduce or stop using these benzos. The visible symptoms can include:
The mental impact of being hooked on Benzos can feel as profound as the issues that the medication was meant to fix. Users often struggle with worse anxiety or even panic attacks—problems that might have led them to start taking the drug to begin with.
Mood swings and emotional ups and downs are common. This makes it hard to feel stable or in control of your feelings. If you are struggling with benzodiazepine addiction, you may thus experience:
When you see physical and mental signs, it shows something is wrong. Changes in someone’s behavior also indicate a serious situation. If someone has an addiction to benzodiazepines, they may visit many doctors to get more prescriptions. In some instances, they might even turn to buying the drugs or using medication that belongs to someone else.
As the addiction grips them, their duties—at work, school, or home—start falling by the wayside. With time, they may begin to pull away from people, distancing themselves from friends, family, and activities they used to like. The things that once mattered to them—their passions, relationships, or goals—begin to fade into the background. What used to be critical doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
No one is completely safe from addiction. However, some factors can raise the chance of developing a drug use problem. When it comes to benzos addiction, there are certain risk factors to consider, such as:
Many factors can increases the risk of developing substance dependence. One key factor is having a family history of addiction.
This is especially true if your parents or siblings have faced similar struggles. Because of this, you are more likely to get addicted to drugs like benzodiazepines. This is true if you have a family history of addiction.
Looking for things that provide quick comfort is normal when facing mental health issues like anxiety, sadness, or PTSD. A lot of people use benzodiazepines to cope with this kind of situation. Untreated mental health issues can lead you to try anything that promises to help you feel better, even for a short time. This may eventually lead to a destructive cycle of addiction and dependency.
Life frequently throws difficult problems at us, which can take us in unexpected directions. Things around us, like stress, losing family, or living in a drug-filled area, can greatly impact a person’s life. These experiences don’t just go away; they stay with you, increasing the chances that you might turn to addiction.
The constant pressure from stress and emotional pain can make drugs seem like the only way to feel better. Being around substance use can add to this feeling.
Here are some other important influences:
These issues are connected and make each other worse. Recognizing how they work together is vital for stopping the cycle and avoiding more problems in the future.
Benzodiazepines can be beneficial if used as directed. However, the issue is that most people abuse them or use them for other purposes without taking a prescription, which also increases the cases of benzodiazepine dependence. Such can be harmful to health and pose extreme risks, including:
Drug overdoses happen when a person takes too much of a substance. This can lead to serious problems like trouble breathing, fainting, or even death. Some substances also slow down the central nervous system.
Combining benzodiazepines with certain substances increases the likelihood of an overdose and other severe medical conditions. The common signs and symptoms of a benzodiazepine overdose include:
These effects can be hazardous, especially in certain situations:
It’s crucial to understand the severe dangers of misusing benzodiazepines. Taking the right steps can protect your life.
When you become dependent on benzodiazepines and suddenly discontinue using them, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms can be very severe and include:
Experts strongly advise against using benzodiazepines for more than two weeks. If you take them for three to four weeks and then stop abruptly, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. For those taking them for a long time, it is critical to gradually lower the dose—often over three to twelve months. To guarantee safety, always perform this procedure under the guidance of a drug addiction expert.
Following your doctor’s guidance on stopping these drugs is essential. A gradual reduction with professional supervision helps avoid the adverse effects of quitting abruptly.
People who are addicted to benzodiazepines often face other mental health problems at the same time. These are known as co-occurring disorders.. If you’ve had problems with anxiety, depression, or trauma before, you might use benzodiazepines to try to feel better.
But here’s the catch: while these drugs might give you some quick relief, using them too much can make your mental health worse in the long run. Instead of helping you feel better, it can create a harmful cycle. Addiction worsens your mental health, and poor mental health makes it harder to stop using drugs. This cycle can be dangerous and complicated to break without the proper support.
We know that cost is a major factor for most people when seeking treatment for drug & alcohol abuse in Virginia. Novara Recovery Center works with most major insurance plans to help cover up to 100% of the costs associated with treatment at our program. To find out your personal options for treatment, get a free verification of insurance benefits right now by clicking the button below.
Benzodiazepines have many benefits, but they are often misused. This misuse can be extremely dangerous and even life threatening. It can also take a heavy toll on your physical and mental health. Here are some of the most common and harmful effects of addiction to these drugs:
Officially diagnosing benzodiazepine abuse, addiction, and dependence is not always straightforward. It often involves multiple examination measures, including interviews, physical examinations, and even mental tests.
Providers will likely look at the person’s history of drug use. They will also check for any changes related to drug use.
Additionally, they will consider other daily activities that the drug affects. In some cases, urinalysis or blood tests can detect benzodiazepines.
Contemporary psychiatric practice looks at this particular disorder slightly differently and refers to it as ‘hypnotic, sedative, or anxiolytic use disorder.’ The language comes from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. This manual is an important reference in mental health.
The American Psychiatric Association defines sedative use disorder. A person has this disorder if they show two out of eleven symptoms within a year. These symptoms also include the following five:
Treating benzodiazepine addiction takes some effort and requires a multifaceted strategy. Effective recovery requires treatment of the condition’s physical and mental elements.
Quitting benzodiazepines can lead to serious side effects. It is important for people addicted to them to seek help from an addiction expert when stopping the drug. The process usually involves slowly lowering the drug dose.
This is done in a controlled way. At the same time, symptoms are managed carefully. This helps the person stop using the medication safely.
Behavioral therapies are important. They help you change how you think about drugs like benzos. They also teach you better ways to handle problems.
Behavioral therapy is important if your addiction began due to mental health issues like depression or anxiety. It is also helpful for problems in your relationships, job, or school.
There are different types of behavioral therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), contingency management, family therapy, and group therapy. CBT is a common method for treating benzodiazepine addiction. It helps you understand why you became addicted. It also teaches you better ways to manage stress and anxiety.
Support groups like Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and other 12-step programs can be highly beneficial in your recovery. They create a sense of togetherness. This helps you feel less alone as you face the challenges of addiction.
The group atmosphere creates a safe space. Here, you can share your experiences. You can also gain strength from others facing similar challenges. This fosters a supporting network, making the rehabilitation process feel less overwhelming.
People who take benzodiazepines for anxiety or sleeplessness should use them carefully. This helps avoid addiction. These meds give quick relief, but wrong use can result in addiction. To stay safe, here are some ways to help avoid getting hooked while taking these drugs:
Life can sometimes feel overwhelming, pushing a person toward using depressant drugs like benzodiazepines to cope. At Novara Recovery Center, we’re here to help. We focus on addiction rehabilitation and other services. We provide a step-by-step program to help you in every phase of recovery.
We ensure you get the right care when you need it. We pay special attention to you and provide resources to help you feel healthy again. Our team is here to help you. Whether you are just starting or need ongoing support, we will assist you at every step.
Call us today at (703) 705-7870 or visit our website to discover how we can help you overcome addiction. You’ve already started the healing process within yourself—it’s time to take the next step and nurture that change.
Written By:
Mental Health Writer
Geoffrey Andaria is a seasoned writer and editor specializing in mental health content. With a B.A. in English and Journalism, he possesses a solid foundation in crafting freelance articles and conducting research. Geoffrey has also completed courses in social work. He dedicates himself to providing valuable and informative content for individuals impacted by mental health challenges and addiction.
Medically Reviewed By:
Expert Contributor
Dr. Williams is currently a board member for two non-profit service organizations. He holds a Master’s degree in Human Services from Lincoln University, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He possesses a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Union Institute and University, located in Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a license to offer addiction counseling in both New Jersey and Connecticut. Additionally, he has submitted an application to become a licensed psychologist in New Jersey.
